From prior to the turn of the twentieth century until about 1980, asbestos was commonly used as insulation in a variety of applications. Now that it is well known that asbestos fibers are carcinogenic, government regulations and the threat of liability litigation has fueled a trend to cause the removal and safe disposal of this asbestos.
The present inventors are aware of three commercially available systems which have some similarities with the system provided by the present invention. In these prior art systems, which are similar to one another, the asbestos contaminated material ("ACM") is vacuum-conveyed to a separator, the conveying air is cleaned using a pulsed baghouse plus HEPA filters and the air is blown using a Roots Blower. The separated ACM falls into a bag through some type of activated valve. The ACM is disposed of using conventional methods, i.e. burial in 2-6 mil polyethylene bags in a landfill.
Conventional asbestos removal operations result in the ACM being placed into polyethylene plastic bags for transportation and disposal. The plastic bags of ACM must be manually removed from the abatement containment, manually transported to the disposal container or vehicle, manually loaded into the container or vehicle, and manually unloaded at the disposal site. The aforedescribed operation is very labor intensive and therefore expensive. In addition to the expense involved, experience has shown that a certain number of bags containing ACM will rupture or otherwise be opened allowing ACM to spill and cause potential exposure. Several attempts have been made to mechanize this materials-handling operation. Unfortunately, all of these systems exhibit severe defects in actual operation. Consequently, there existed a need for a solution to this problem.